Spiral, plane curve that, in general, winds around a point while moving ever farther from the point. Many kinds of spiral are known, the first dating from the days of ancient Greece. The curves are observed in nature, and human beings have used them in machines and in ornament, notably architectural—for example, the whorl in an Ionic capital. The two most famous spirals are described below.

Although Greek mathematician Archimedes did not discover the spiral that bears his name (seefigure), he did employ it in his On Spirals (c. 225 bc) to square the circle and trisect an angle. The equation of the spiral of Archimedes is r = aθ, in which a is a constant, r is the length of the radius from the centre, or beginning, of the spiral, and θ is the angular position (amount of rotation) of the radius. Like the grooves in a phonograph record, the distance between successive turns of the spiral is a constant—2πa, if θ is measured in radians.

The equiangular, or logarithmic, spiral (seefigure) was discovered by the French scientist René Descartes in 1638. In 1692 the Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli named it spira mirabilis (“miracle spiral”) for its mathematical properties; it is carved on his tomb. The general equation of the logarithmic spiral is r = aeθ cot b, in which r is the radius of each turn of the spiral, a and b are constants that depend on the particular spiral, θ is the angle of rotation as the curve spirals, and e is the base of the natural logarithm. Whereas successive turns of the spiral of Archimedes are equally spaced, the distance between successive turns of the logarithmic spiral increases in a geometric progression (such as 1, 2, 4, 8,…). Among its other interesting properties, every ray from its centre intersects every turn of the spiral at a constant angle (equiangular), represented in the equation by b. Also, for b = π/2 the radius reduces to the constant a—in other words, to a circle of radius a. This approximate curve is observed in spider webs and, to a greater degree of accuracy, in the chambered mollusk, nautilus (seephotograph), and in certain flowers.

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c. 287 bce Syracuse, Sicily [Italy] 212/211 bce Syracuse the most-famous mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece. Archimedes is especially important for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder. He is known for his formulation of...

the branch of mathematics concerned with the shape of individual objects, spatial relationships among various objects, and the properties of surrounding space. It is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, having arisen in response to such practical problems as those found in surveying, and its...